I spoke at random, wondering how he would take the words, and they had more effect than I had even hoped for. His face turned all of a mottled colour; he banged his fist upon the table and uttered a horrible oath, calling upon God to slay him if he had ever set foot on the deck of a ship named the Royal Fortune.
"And when you says, says you," he added, sidling up to me, "Old George never see'd a Royal Fortune, says you--why, you're saying what's right and fair, and I thanks you, sir. I thanks you with a true sailor's 'eart "; at which he would have wrung my hand. But I had no hand ready for him; I barely heard his words. Whydah--the Guinea coast--the ship Royal Fortune! The truth came so suddenly upon me that I had not the wit to keep silence. I could have bitten off my tongue the next moment. As it was I caught most of the sentence back. But the beginning of it jumped from my mouth.
"At last I know"--I began and stopped.
"What?" said Mr. Glen, with his whole face distorted into an insinuating grin. But he was standing very close to me and a little behind my back.
"That my father thrashed me over twenty years ago," said I, clapping my hand to my coat tails and springing away from him.
"And you have never forgotten it," said he.
"On the contrary," said I, "I have only just remembered it."
Mr. Glen moved away from the table and walked towards the door. Thus he disclosed the table to me, and I laughed very contentedly. Mr. Glen immediately turned. He had reached the door, and he stood in the doorway biting shreds of skin from his thumb.
"You are in good spirits," said he, rather surlily.
"I was never in better," said I. "The motions of inanimate bodies are invariably instructive."